


After Hollow

by blairxeim



Category: The Hollow, The Hollow (Cartoon), The Hollow Netflix
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Tags Subject to Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 01:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blairxeim/pseuds/blairxeim
Summary: You loved the show, I loved the show. I wanted more. So I made more! After the game, the kids have some stuff they need to deal with from their time in the game and some stuff they have to finally face now that they're out of the game.





	After Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> This started as just another fan-girling session with my friend Tink which quickly turned into a full-on declaration of my doing this fic (while also bribing her to work on another fic she'd been talking about). This first chapter doesn't even have the scene that I wanted to happen in the show that sparked this fic, so expect excited screaming later when that happens. <3

Adam jolted with a gasping breath and blinked into the bright lights that barred down on him from all angles. The cheers echoed around him, mixing with his pulse pounding in his ears. Still in a state of confusion, though still riding off the adrenaline of finally getting out of the game, Adam, Mira, and Kai were all three ushered off of their seats and towards the center of the stage.

Memories were returning in bits and pieces, enough that Adam could awkwardly join his two best friends in their celebration. They obviously had a better time recentering themselves after the game, maybe it was due to him almost dying in the game? Still, he had little time to think about it as Weirdie decided to start a round of applause for the losing team. Adam glanced over, intending to watch them wake up but noticing a slightly distressed look on Kai’s face.

“Kai, are you okay?” That caught Mira’s attention, both of them giving worried looks to the fidgeting male. Adam could tell with a shared look between Mira and himself that they were both thinking the same thing: was Kai feeling backlash from the glitching game?

“Yeah it’s just-” Kai laced his hands together and held them straight down in front of himself. He rocked slightly back and forth, biting his lip. “I really need to go to the bathroom-” Adam chuckled at his friend’s continued ridiculousness as Mira rolled her eyes, mirroring Adam’s amused look. 

“Let’s hear it for our winners!” The announcement brought them out of it as Kai was handed their long awaited winning trophy. The raised their joined hands into the air with confident grins. The roaring applause surrounded them, background noise as the rest of Adam’s memories filled in. It was a weird sensation, having holes you never know you had being filled in. Like time you never knew existed was returning.

He remembered when he first met Kai and Mira. Mira had been his friend for a while, almost qualifying as a childhood friend. They’d been going to the same schools since middle school. Honestly the first day he had asked her to borrow a pencil, how could he forget such an important thing on literally the first day of school, and he had been confused by her slightly excited, slightly horrified face. That is, until he watched her pull a pencil the size of his forearm out of his backpack. He had laughed, looking at her in pure exhilarated shock. “Why do you have that?” She shrugged and asked if he still wanted to use it. Of course he did, and they had become best friends.

Kai had come about a couple years later, as the Hollow was just starting to pick up. Mira and Adam had been spending most of their afterschool time at a local gaming arcade which housed one of many trial runs for the Hollow. It was a shortened version of the game, about thirty minutes, without the huge memory swipe. The two of them had been undefeated until Adam went up against Kai. The moment he defeated both of the reigning champs, the two had begged him to be part of their team. It hadn’t taken much begging, Kai was more than thrilled to hang out with them. He’d never been very transparent about his crush on Mira but then again, Kai didn’t tend to hide what he was feeling at all most of the time. It sure made it easy to trust him though, and he fit into the duo’s group like the final puzzle piece. He completed the picture.

It hadn’t taken long for them to find their way into the competition for the Hollow when the official game was released. The technology was so complex that it gained media attention from all over. The trio spent hours upon days together trying to figure out the best strategies to win. Their teamwork got them pretty far, until a new element was added into the upper levels of the competition. The memory sweep.

“Adam?” Kai gripped Adam’s shoulder, raising a brow. Mira had her brows furrowed in concern. “You spacing out on us? It’s time to get off stage.” Sure enough, Weirdie was giving them a full grin smile with eyes that said to wrap it up. Adam shook his head, shrugging as he turned towards the stairs just out of sight from the crowd.

“Sorry guys, just kind of jarring getting my memories back.”

“They didn’t automatically come back?” Mira worried her lip between her teeth, her eyes narrowing as she thought it over. “Mine felt a little blurry at first but were all there, kind of like waking up from the dentist or from surgery.”

“As someone who has done neither of those things-” Kai interjected, throwing his arms around his two friends’ necks. “I would akin it more to waking up from a deep sleep, or a nightmare.” His grin slipped away, a slightly haunted look passing over his features. “Hey, I might sound crazy, but we ARE back in reality right? This isn’t game part two, is it?”

Adam shook his head, sighing. “If it was, how would we know?”

“Not helping.” Kai grumbled, letting his arms drop so he could cross them in front of his chest. “I’m being serious. At least take me seriously knowing how right I am all the time in the real world.”

“All the time?” Mira smirked, giggling at the overdramatic way Adam sent a skeptical look Kai’s way.

“Okay first of all, rude.” Kai growled. “Secondly, just hear me out. I- I think I saw something... glitchy?”

“Glitchy?” Mira stopped to open the stage door that led back towards their dressing rooms and the lockers that held all of their stuff. “You mean like....” She made a noncommittal waving of her hands, trying to find the right words.

“Like I saw Vanessa’s eye glitch!” Kai shouted, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“Okay, and I thought I was feeling a little out of it after waking up from the game.” Adam laughed, walking ahead of the group. “Face it Kai, nothing is up with Vanessa. If anything, I’m more worried about how they managed to cheat so much and still lose.”

“Cheat?” Mira’s shocked voice carried from farther back than it should have. Adam turned to see the two of them standing in the doorway still. Kai looked a little peeved, Mira just looked confused. “Why would you say that? It’s kind of impossible to cheat when the game literally prevents it from doing so. You’re in front of a live audience and Weirdie literally helped make the game, he knows how to run it better than any of us. He’d know if they tried to upload or hack anything into their chairs before the game started.”

“Then why did they know it was a game?” Adam reasoned. “They obviously didn’t think much of the glitching, at least I don’t think so-”

“Who cares!” Kai shouted, stepping up to Adam. “I know what I saw! The game is over- I think. But if this is real life then why is her eye glitching?”

“I don’t know?” Adam shouted back, finding it easier to fall back into their bickering from the game than the usual passive-aggressive manner he’d used on Kai in the past. “Why are you asking me like I know? Last time I checked, I just got out of the same game and have literally the same amount of knowledge you do about it.”

“Enough!” Mira growled, pushing her palms into the boys’ faces to push them apart. “You guys are idiots, still.” She sighed, linking her arms with each of theirs and pulling them along. “If you’re that worried about it Kai, just ask Vanessa about it once we get to the lockers. If you think they cheated... well I don’t think they would willingly admit that but maybe they would want to brag about it? I don’t know Adam, that whole game was crazy. It was the most disjointed game of Hollow that I’d- that we’ve ever played. Normally there’s one whole theme but this....”

“Maybe it was for dramatic effect.” Kai shrugged before adapting his best impression of Weirdie. “A whole map like you’ve never seen before!”

“Maybe.” Mira agreed, though she looked less than sure. They walked into the locker rooms to find the whole thing empty. “They totally left before us right? Did we really take that long?”

“Or were they never real in the first place!” Kai shouted, motioning back to the doorway just in enough time to smack Vanessa in the face as she turned into the room.

“Ow! Kai!” She cried out, obviously pissed. “Watch it!”

“Yeah, watch it.” Reeves sneered. He didn’t seem as aggressive as in the game, more so like he was letting off some steam. Adam figured those two just to be sore losers, especially when Reeves let the haughty expression crack. He looked at the group in confusion. “What the hell was that map, by the way? Was the game really bugging out on us or was that some twisted shit?”

“Language.” Mira frowned. “Wait, so you didn’t do that?”

“You think we could do that?” Vanessa scoffed, raising one brow in a bored manner.

“No, she asked because she wanted to see your reaction. Of course that’s what we think.” Kai barked, pointing a finger at the opposing team. “I saw you glitch! You glitched all over that stage.”

Vanessa and Reeves shared a look before Vanessa stared down Adam. “You should get them into a hospital. I think the game fried their brains.”

“It was his idea in the first place!” Kai exclaimed.

“Then you all need help.” Reeves frowned, looking like he regretted talking to them in the first place. “And no, we didn’t cheat. That’s stupid, there was no way to cheat. Honestly-” He raised a brow as he looked the trio over. “We didn’t expect there to be a need to even resort to cheating against you guys.”

“Rude. That’s exactly what a cheater would say.” Kai muttered under his breath.

“Dude! When will you learn I can hear you when you do that!”

“Cheatersaywhat?” Kai mumbled, his words mixing together but it was still obvious what he’d said.

“Kai!” Both Adam and Mira scolded him, stopping the childish fight before it could continue.

“What?” He whined, crossing his arms. “You were all thinking it too.”

“Not once did that sentence pop into my head.” Adam muttered, shaking his head. “Come on, we all just need to go home and-”

“Then what are we waiting for.” Mira shuts her locker door. “Sorry for accusing you of something so stupid guys. It should have been obvious you wouldn’t have been able to do something like that and you guys got just as scared about the glitching as we did.”

“Uh, no we didn’t.” Vanessa countered. “But all the same-” She looked at Adam and gave a sheepish grin. “Sorry for trying to, like, kill you multiple times.”

“Sorry you failed.” Adam grinned back before realizing his wording and rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to correct himself. “At- uh- killing... me.”

The kids all grabbed their stuff and headed out of the studio for the last time. Vanessa caught Adam’s arm and the two hung back. “Listen. I really am sorry. We were totally out of control. We may be super competitive but that was insane.”

Adam shrugged, lightly knocking his fist against her shoulder. “It’s cool. Think of how crazy all the things we do in other video games would be if we were the ones doing them instead of a playable characters. Our- uh- minds that is.”

“You’ve been spending way too much time with Kai. You’re starting to ramble like him.” Vanessa chuckled, walking ahead of Adam.

“Oh.” Was all Adam could manage as he followed her. The winning trio had gotten to the studio via the bus. Adam had just recently gotten his temps so he couldn’t drive them and the other two were too young to try to get their licenses yet. Vanessa and Reeves walked off to meet Skeet in the parking lot so he assumed one of them had driven there.

“Adam hurry!” Mira called, waving at him from the bus stop a little ways down the sidewalk. Sure enough, the bus was breaking until it pulled into a stop in front of the two kids. Adam ran to catch it as Kai pretended to dally around finding his bus pass, giving him time to get behind Mira who was trying to hold in laughter. As soon as she moved aside to show Kai that Adam was on the bus, Kai magically pulled the card out of his back pocket and moved to find a seat. The bus driver looked more than a little dead inside as the other two kids sat together in the seats behind Kai.

“Home?” Adam smiled, as if offering a choice.

“As long as there are no more child hungry witches to fight off.” Kai shuddered. “Those were unpleasant before they switched!”

“I want to forget everything that happened there.” Mira shuddered, making gagging faces as she remembered the less than appealing things she may have eaten there, even if they were digitally done.

Adam didn’t say anything, but her sentence made him think to another situation Mira tried to force the both of them to forget. He knew he needed to talk to her about it. Maybe they were fine right now, in the afterglow of winning the game, but later on when everything died down? Adam just wanted to make sure everything with his best friend was going to be alright. The bus, however, was not the place to talk about it. As soon as they got home, Adam promised himself, they were going to talk about what happened. The kiss. Adam glanced over at Mira, who was currently completely invested in a meme war with Kai. He could only see Mira’s phone screen but the picture battle popping up in the chatroom could only be the work of his friends. Each picture barely stayed on the screen for a full thirty seconds before it was sent up beyond sight by the next flood of pics.

Adam thankfully sighed, looking out the window. His friends were invested, he would have at least have the full ride to the terminal where they would switch buses before he had to join back into their conversations. He needed the time to thank about how he was going to word his conversation with Mira. She showed perfectly well how unwilling she was to talk about it. It wasn’t going to be easy, in any case.


End file.
